Destiny: The Complete Saga: Gods of Night, Mere Mortals, and Lost Souls by David Mack

Author:David Mack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books/Star Trek

1574

12

A lifetime of night surrendered to the day. The icy sterility of the starry reaches of space faded from view as the city of Axion descended into the pale corona of a planet’s upper atmosphere.

Veronica Fletcher stood at the edge of the city and peeked over its rocky rim, at the lush green orb flattening beneath her. Fiery wisps danced past the city-ship’s invisible sphere of protection, and a great roar, like that of an engine, chased away all the stray thoughts that had been lingering in the forgotten tenements of her mind.

Next to her, Erika Hernandez perched on the corner of the precipice and watched the Caeliar’s new world rising to meet them. Fletcher recalled how different she and Hernandez had looked in their youth—Fletcher had been pale and golden-haired, in contrast to Hernandez’s black hair and olive complexion. Now they looked all but identical: pale, snow-maned, withered, and ravaged by time and gravity. Their stooped, fragile bodies were both clothed in silvery-gray wraps that reminded her of both togas and saris. Even their shoes had been replaced by flexible, synthetic-fiber slippers made by their captors.

She had never forgotten. Not even now, watching mountains of clouds race past into a blue sky, did she forget where she was, how she’d come to be there, and who was responsible. All the beauties of creation wouldn’t have been enough to make her forget that she was a prisoner, a dying bird in a gilded cage.

The city broke through the bottom layer of cloud cover, and the details of a majestic landscape were revealed below them. Rugged, reddish-brown cliffs flanked abyssal canyons, and in the distance lay a range of charcoal-hued mountains topped with sun-splashed snowcaps. In the middle distance, a verdant landscape of rolling hills and broad plains was cut by wide rivers.

Hernandez sounded awed. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

“It’s everything I’d hoped it would be,” Fletcher replied in her ancient rasp of a voice.

A knifing jab of pain pushed between her ribs, and she fought for breath as a fierce pressure clamped around her heart. Not here, she commanded her failing body. Not yet. I won’t die in this damned city. Slowly, the pain faded.

The horizon became all but level as the city-ship of Axion settled into a stable, hovering position above the planet’s surface. Then there was a subtle change in the air around them. A soft hush of moving atmosphere. The natural perfumes of flowers and green plants and living things. Thousands of tiny olfactory details came to Fletcher, like whispers half heard.

She became aware of warmth on her skin, and she looked up at the yellowish-orange sun high overhead. It was the first time she had felt natural solar radiation in more than fifty years. “The Caeliar must have turned off the shields,” she said.

On the surface, a herd of graceful-looking animals gamboled across the open plains and stopped every few paces to graze on grass and flowers.

Hernandez stretched her arms over her head and smiled. “It’s like paradise,” she said.

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